


Of Stars and Free Will

by quicksilverdeancas (quicksilvermalec)



Series: Sam Winchester Bingo [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Ambivalent to Sexual Orientation Castiel, Angst, Bisexual Sam Winchester, DeanandCas bingo, Heterosexual Dean Winchester, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, Other, Pining Castiel, Pining Sam, Sadness, Sam bingo, Yes I know, but not for each other, enjoy, oops I'm terrible, shock and awe I made Dean straight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-25 14:30:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20725754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksilvermalec/pseuds/quicksilverdeancas
Summary: Sam and Castiel were in almost the same situation, but with different people.Sam, at least, had resigned himself to it.or, in which Sam pines, and Castiel pines, and everyone is pretty much generally miserable.





	Of Stars and Free Will

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DeanandCasBingo](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=DeanandCasBingo), [Clearfear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clearfear/gifts).

> This was written for the Sam Winchester and DeanandCas bingos. It covers the squares "Sam/Castiel" and "Angst".
> 
> Enjoy!

Dean once said, “this is it.” (Sam had asked what.) “Team Free Will. One ex-blood junkie, one dropout with six bucks to his name, and Mr. Comatose over there.”

Sam begged to differ.

Team Free Will, in his opinion, was one oblivious asshole who seemed to hate everyone (including his brother and best friend), the angel who was hopelessly in love with him, and the pathetic 6 foot 5 moose who always wanted what he couldn’t have.

And Sam knew how it ended. It ended badly. Everything ended badly for Sam Winchester, especially when it came to love. He hated being in love. He hated everything about the concept.

Because every person he’d loved was dead. Except somehow, some of them came back. But only two.

Sam tried to stay away. He tried to ignore it. But the universe hated him almost as much as he hated it. He could never avoid his feelings for long.

They always found him. _He_ always found him. Like right now, while Dean was asleep in a motel room and Sam was sitting on the hood of the Impala drinking a beer. There was a sound like leaves rustling in the wind and there he was – the impressively messy-haired, impossibly blue-eyed, trenchcoat-wearing angel who followed his brother around like a lovesick puppy.

“Hello, Castiel,” Sam muttered, sounding depressed even to himself. He took another swig of his beer. He wasn’t drunk enough for this.

“Hello, Sam,” Cas greeted him cheerfully. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah.” Sam swallowed hard. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Cas gave him a look like he wasn’t entirely convinced, but he didn’t press the matter. Instead, he just moved on to the topic that had brought him there in the first place. “I have been researching love.”

Sam suppressed a groan. He _really _wasn’t drunk enough for this. “Yeah?” Another long pull from his beer. Please let this be the one that makes it not hurt.

“Yes. I understand the concept, but I do not understand the feeling itself.”

“And?” There must have been a reason he came to Sam. He was just waiting for it to come out.

“Can you tell me about it?”

There it was.

“This is what I can tell you about love, Cas. Love is stupid, and depressing, and not worth your fucking time.”

Cas recoiled slightly at the pure bitterness in Sam’s voice. “Why do you think that?”

Sam sighed and finished his beer. “I know you haven’t been around that long, Cas, but every person I’ve ever loved – every person I’ve slept with or _wanted _to sleep with – has fucking died.”

That was all Cas needed to know. Sam didn’t need to spill his guts just because his inhibitions were lowered by the lovely buzz of his second beer.

“So you have given up,” Cas asserted. Sam nodded, reaching through the open passenger window into the cooler holding three more bottles.

“That’s exactly what I’ve done.”

Castiel leaned back onto the heels of his hands. It was a small thing, but it surprised Sam. It made Cas look so… comfortable in his body. Comfortable like he’d never really seemed before. He had always worn Jimmy Novak like one might wear a winter coat their brother had shoved snow down the back of – stiffly and carefully. This one small movement made him look so very human, and it pulled at Sam’s heart just a little bit.

“But can you tell me what it feels like?” he asked, and he was looking directly at Sam, who had to crane his neck a little bit to see him, and he was doing that thing he did that Sam had never quite been able to decide whether it was an angel thing or just a Cas thing. The thing where he gave whomever he was talking to all of his undivided attention, the thing he did where he made you feel like whatever you were saying was the most important thing he’d ever heard in all his millennia of life.

He was staring right at Sam, and they were all alone, out here, in the dark, sitting on Sam’s brother’s car, and Sam knew he could do whatever he wanted in this moment and Dean would never need to know – hell, Dean probably wouldn’t even care – but Sam Winchester was a coward, so he looked away.

He leaned back, rested his upper body against the windshield, and stared at the stars. And he told his best friend, “no. No, I can’t.”

#~+~#

Cas didn’t bring it up again for a while, and Sam thought he’d dropped the subject. Until several weeks later, when they once again found themselves alone without Dean.

“When you’re in love with someone who doesn’t love you back, that is called ‘unrequited love’, is it not?” Castiel asked him.

Sam flopped backward onto the motel bed. _I fucking hate my life_, he thought very aggressively at his friend. “Yes,” he grunted unhelpfully. “That’s what we call it.”

“It hurts. It does make logical sense that it would, emotionally, be painful to be in love with someone but not to have your feelings returned, but I had not thought it would be quite this intense. It’s very… present.”

That was cruel. That was just cruel.

Not on Cas’ part, particularly. That Castiel was saying this was more of an irony than anything else. But it was extremely cruel of the universe to put Sam in a position to have to explain unrequited love to the object of his own.

“Yeah, Cas, it hurts. It’s a fact of life. We all develop stupid crushes on people who will _never_ want us. I assume it’s intended to teach us all some important lesson about life, but instead we just slog our way through it and keep feeling the goddamn pain until we finally get over whoever it is that doesn’t like us back.”

“Who is it, Sam?” Castiel asked sympathetically, and that was not something Sam was prepared for.

“What do you mean?” he asked, feigning ignorance.

“You have seemed consistently bitter surrounding this particular topic, and I sensed that it didn’t just have to do with, as you said, everyone you’ve ever loved being dead, and this seems to confirm that suspicion. You are speaking from firsthand experience. Who is it that you are unrequitedly in love with?”

Sam sighed. “No one you know,” he murmured, and left it at that blatant lie.

#~+~#

The third time Cas brought it up, Sam couldn’t handle himself anymore.

Dean had gone out for the night, presumably to get drunk and feel up some thirty-something women, and Cas had dropped in to say goodnight, only then he’d stayed.

Because he, evidently, wanted to keep talking about his stupid, unrequited, only-sort-of-gay crush on Sam’s brother, and Sam was fed up with it.

“Can you stop?” he demanded. Cas froze and stared at him.

“Stop what?” he asked hesitantly.

“Can you stop talking about how hopelessly in love with Dean you are? Because I get it, alright? You wish he loved you back. But if you need someone to unload all of that onto, don’t make me be it.”

“Are you alright, Sam? Why are you suddenly so angry?”

“Because I’m in love with you, Castiel!” he screamed, just to watch Cas’ back stiffen into a hard line and his face go carefully blank. “Because I’ve been listening to you talk about my brother for months now and I don’t want to hear it! Because a) that’s my _brother_, and b) because it’s you, Cas, it’s always been you. Since the day I met you I knew you were different and special and I wanted you and every day since then as you’ve become my best friend I have been dying to tell you but it doesn’t matter because you’ve been too busy pining over my brother – who is, in fact, actually straight, by the way – to notice me pining over you!”

His chest was heaving and he was breathing like he’d just run a marathon. His face felt hot and he felt vulnerable and embarrassed. Castiel was staring at him like he was another new human thing he’d just discovered.

“I do not love you like I love your brother, Sam,” Cas told him. Sam looked at the corner of the desk to avoid making eye contact.

“Jeez, don’t sugar-coat it for me.”

Cas took a step towards him, still looking at him with that curious intensity in his eyes. “I am sorry that I made you uncomfortable, Sam. It was never my intention.”

“I know, Cas. I know it wasn’t.” Sam still wasn’t looking at him, but now he could feel tears running down his face. “I just- that’s what’s going on with me. That’s why I’m angry.”

“I’m sorry,” Cas offered, reaching out for his arm or his shoulder or something. Sam pulled away.

“It really doesn’t matter. Neither of us are getting what we want. I just wish I would fucking get over you already.”

There was nothing either of them could do. Sam had always known how Cas felt – it was written all over his face.

In the end, it had all been Sam’s mistake.


End file.
